


Practical Magic

by devera



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 05:09:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devera/pseuds/devera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hakkai and Gojyo are learning not to accept jobs from monks. Or at least to charge them more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practical Magic

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "black magic" prompt over at saiyuki_wk_au. This is pre-journey 85 and flirts amateurishly with Hammer Horror and its ilk, and contains non-con/dub-con triggers, although neatly avoids them for fluffier effect). 
> 
> It's been a really long time since I've written anything, so of course I'm not happy with it, but it's finished, and that's better than most things I've started in the last 6 months. Unbeta'd so all flaws and errors are mine and probably glaringly obvious. Apologies, if so, but I hope you enjoy!

It happened like this: there was a relic, a mandala to be precise. Sanzo's details on it were sketchy, to say the least, and perhaps the fact that it sounded like a simple job should have been their first clue. Their second clue should have been that it _was_ simple. They traced the fence, found the buyer, tracked him to his lair – the basement of an abandoned building in an otherwise prosperous town – and found the mandala just lying there on a table, not a soul around. So, simple. Retrieve the artefact, return it to Sanzo, collect their fee. Piece of cake, as Gojyo liked to say, but Hakkai was just starting to formulate an idea that it had all been too easy when events arranged themselves to prove him correct.

In hindsight the unexpected concussive blast that seemed to be a direct result of Gojyo's hand coming in contact with the mandala had not, in all probability, been real, since when Hakkai woke up some indefinable time later he was fairly sure that the building he found himself in was the same one they had originally entered and had not in fact been levelled to the ground as had been his initial impression. And too, the one individual he recognised amongst the crowd of men and women currently gathered around him was the same man who had purchased the stolen mandala. Of course, he hadn't been wearing a red velvet robe at the time, and he'd looked decidedly less harmless then than he did now, which perhaps had more to do with the knife in his hand than the change in his wardrobe. Also, there was the matter of Hakkai being tied up, quite securely; tied up and, well, quite naked, which was only a mildly less worrying discovery than the fact that Gojyo wasn't. Well, he _was_ naked, he just wasn't tied to a marble table top. Instead he was standing calmly and quietly between two rather large, similarly garbed men whom he could have chopped into pieces without really even breaking a sweat. Except he wasn't.

"Gojyo?" Hakkai ventured, not out of any great expectation that Gojyo would look at him and smile and say something corny like, _Shit. I guess they caught us with our pants down, huh?_ or _If they wanted to see me naked, all they had to do was ask_ , or similar, but more out of genuine confusion because there was something clearly wrong beyond the immediately obvious. Gojyo's expression was blank, his eyes dull. He was looking at Hakkai, but there was no recognition in him. Drugged, Hakkai realised, hoped, and felt for the first time true alarm. He dragged his gaze back to the one person in the room whom he recognised and therefore held personally responsible. 

"What have you done to him?" he demanded, and perhaps if his bonds had not been quite so well secured, he would have been across the space in that second and not entirely interested in the answer after all.

"If you think I'm going to take the time to explain," the fellow responded, "you're going to be disappointed. We're on a schedule here." He turned to another of his robed companions with a quick gesture. "Fen? The limiter, if you will."

The man he addressed as Fen stepped forward out of the line and toward Hakkai, and before Hakkai could even think to object, reached down and put warm soft fingers on Hakkai's earlobe and pulled sharply on one of his cuffs.

Between one heartbeat and the next, Hakkai could feel its absence, a prickling tingle of change dancing along the edges of his nerves and suspended there. Suddenly he felt sharper, clearer. He could smell the humans in the room. Three of the men worked at some kind of manual labour and hadn't washed before coming here, and one of the women was in her menstrual cycle. The other two smelled of fine, expensive products, and another of the men's hair had recently been washed in something floral. Those were the scents that hit him first, but not the hardest, for almost all of them to a person also reeked of something far less easily defined, something far less tangible. A part of him recognised it for what it was but the remainder of him was still very much human and couldn't parse it, but it made his lips draw back from his teeth and his skin raise in gooseflesh.

"Another?" the man called Fen asked, his voice gravelly. He smelled of something Hakkai _could_ identify – fear.

"No," the other said. "That seems to be enough. Give me the cup."

Someone else came forward with a chalice of rather ugly design, although no-one seemed particularly concerned about it. Instead, they were watching their taciturn master of ceremonies as the hungry watches a meal being prepared, his every move as he took the cup and raised the knife and stepped into the circle towards Hakkai tracked with avid focus. Hakkai watched too, because he thought he could probably see where this was going and there seemed very little he could do about it. They hadn't taken enough limiters off for him to be able to break free of his bonds – a conscious choice on their part, clearly - or to make use of his trump card of which he was fairly sure they were likely not aware. Gojyo was in no position to help him either, obviously, or he already would have, and so he could do nothing but watch as the man reached for and grasped his bound arm and drew the knife across the soft flesh of his forearm and then put the cup underneath in order to collect the blood that began to dribble out. 

It wasn't a deep cut, so clearly they did not mean to kill him; at least, not yet. But perhaps that didn't matter. The scent of it seemed to suddenly twist in Hakkai's gut, outrage or fear or merely just- It wasn't an unpleasant smell, as such, was in fact familiar in a way he wasn't sure anything else ever could be, but merely the fact that he _could_ smell it changed him. Suddenly his heart beat harder and even though he knew it was futile, still he jerked violently against his bonds so that the master of ceremonies startled and almost stepped back, raising his gaze to Hakkai's face warily and seeing something there that gave him some reason for haste. He drew back quickly, either having achieved what he had intended or having decided it was enough, and Hakkai watched him go as if he was the only other person in the room, until he had stepped back into his place and someone else moved.

Gojyo, it was Gojyo, being brought forward by the two men either side of him and turned in front of the cupbearer so that Hakkai could see what had been done to him and suddenly it all started making a horrible kind of sense. Hakkai wasn't the apparent sacrifice, despite the way he was tied here; or perhaps, more accurately, he wasn't the _important_ sacrifice, if the pattern these people had painted across Gojyo's naked back and buttocks was any indication. It was the same pattern engraved onto the mandala he and Gojyo had been sent to retrieve.

This was the last time, Hakkai swore to himself as he watched the men bring the chalice to Gojyo's mouth and forced him to drink, as he realised that the rest had started chanting and that Gojyo seemed to be swallowing in time to the low, indistinct sounds - the absolute last time either of them accepted a job from the monks without a full and total disclosure on what the job entailed.

Gojyo neither coughed nor flinched as the men forced him to drain the cup, but when he was turned about again, his mouth was as red as his hair and he seemed somehow less dull, as if the concoction had infused him with some measure of unnatural vitality. Which was a ridiculous notion, of course, and Hakkai dismissed it immediately – he was only too aware of exactly how much blood one had to bathe in bring about some kind of metaphysical change, and a half a pint of a twice removed curse was certainly not enough. But still, as Gojyo was brought forward and hauled bodily up onto the table to kneel over him, he seemed unnaturally warm. Hakkai could practically feel his body heat, even though the only place they were touching was where Gojyo's knees were braced on the table either side of Hakkai's thighs and his wrists brushed Hakkai's shoulders where his hands were braced either side of his head. He hadn't realised just how cold he'd been until Gojyo was right there, and for a strange moment, he only wanted to feel that heat a little more closely, a little more... intimately.

He started when he felt something cooler brush the side of his face – not Gojyo, for Gojyo still didn't seem to be capable of moving without direction and still didn't seem to recognise him, but Fen again, reaching once more for his limiters, and Hakkai stared at him as he started tugging on the second one, and thought about the next few seconds following, where he would separate Fen's hand from the rest of him before he began on the others.

As soon as the cuff fell off, however, he realised that probably wasn't going to happen, not because he still didn't want to kill them, but because he wasn't sure they were nearly as important anymore than Gojyo, than having him this close, than being able to drink in the smell of him, the sight. Hakkai suddenly ached to touch him and couldn't – couldn't do more than to strain in his direction and lick his lips to try and taste him on the air, and there was something wrong, this wasn't how he- He didn't act like this, didn't feel like this towards... Did he?

"Gojyo," he gasped, fighting urges he hadn't even realised he had, and he honestly wasn't sure what he was asking for, but then finally, Gojyo was betraying some reaction. His face was no longer blank, but it still didn't seem right. His eyes had gone bright, and his face had gone slack with some expression Hakkai almost recognised, might have recognised if he'd been able to focus anywhere else but upon Gojyo's red, wet mouth and the breath starting to come fast between his parted lips. He seemed to be getting closer, as if he was falling in slow motion, and it wasn't fast enough for Hakkai and it was entirely too fast and he had to stop this, he had to do something, before he did something that he couldn't fix, before he wanted something that would ruin every-

Gojyo's body on his, his mouth on his, was shocking enough to stutter all thought, and for a second, a very long second, Hakkai did not understand what was happening. And then Gojyo breathed out and slid against him, quite effectively grinding against Hakkai's erection. The jolt of arousal that lanced through him was almost painful, but not quite as painful as the mechanical way in which Gojyo, normally so graceful, so sinuous, moved.

In that moment, the depths to which he did not want this illuminated something that he hadn't really ever known he did – he _did_ want it, or something like it; he wanted Gojyo, just not like this, at the expense of Gojyo's free will, at the cost of his sense of self-worth. Perhaps it was foolish to feel surprise at this revelation, followed closely by bitterness at the circumstances in which this realisation was making itself known, how far from the never-before-imagined ideal this moment was, but that was a sentiment he would deal with later. Right now, he recognised the danger, both immediate and long term. Immediately, the two of them were perhaps not meant to survive whatever was supposed to happen here. Gojyo's will had been taken from him and Hakkai's nearly so, but what these people had not counted on was the depths to which Hakkai's self-loathing went, and what that meant in terms of what he would and would not allow himself. He could think of nothing else except Gojyo and his mouth and his flesh and the sounds he might make when Hakkai took him, and it still would never be enough to force him to hurt someone that he loved. No, he would rather destroy himself.

Long term of course was even worse, because if he didn't stop this he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to look Gojyo in the face again and he certainly wouldn't be able to bear it if Gojyo couldn't look at him either.

That presented a different dilemma – how to get out of this predicament right now, before Gojyo... before he- Hakkai's thoughts stuttered again and he went blind for a moment as Gojyo's hips ground down again, careless and clumsy and terrifyingly _wonderful_. He smelled like sex, like arousal and comfort and an end to hunger and Hakkai gritted his teeth, actually gritted his teeth and closed his eyes and took a moment to curse his decision to remain celibate this whole last year because it felt like his entire body had quite rightly decided to take the matter out of his hands, and if Gojyo did that again, it was possible this ceremony was going to be very short lived indeed. 

" _Gojyo_ ," he gasped again, and this time, even to his own ears, it didn't sound like much of an objection. Gojyo was panting against his shoulder, a sound more distressed than aroused no matter that Hakkai could feel his own erection pressed hotly against his hip and it was that more than anything that drove Hakkai to his only possible option. He turned his head and nuzzled his face through the tangling strands of Gojyo's soft, fragrant hair until he was pressed against the side of Gojyo's neck, and then he opened his mouth and bit.

Gojyo _yowled_.

And then he jerked away, and blinked down at Hakkai and said, "What the _fuck_?!"

"Help!" Hakkai grated, and Gojyo looked up again, and then around, and if he'd perhaps been anyone else he might have stopped for an explanation but he was Gojyo and he didn't often care about explanations. That was quite all right with Hakkai, that was exactly what was called for right now. There was the snap of ozone in the air and the near-musical chime of chains and steel and people started screaming as Gojyo tumbled off both Hakkai and the table, and Hakkai stared at the ceiling and tried to calm his breathing and ignore the new smells of blood and fear and panic coming from around him.

It was all over fairly quickly in the end, while Hakkai remained tied down and unable to move, and that was all right too, because whatever mood Gojyo was in, Hakkai was in a worse one, and he may not have stopped at just the members of the inner circle. Some of them had likely managed to get away, he thought, when the noise had stopped and he finally turned his head to look. Gojyo wasn't surrounded by nearly as many... parts as one might have expected from such a crowd, and he didn't actually seem to be in top fighting form, either. He was standing facing the open door out of the room, breathing heavily and leaning on the shakujo as if he might fall over. He probably needed a moment, considering. Hakkai was comfortable enough to let him have it before eventually clearing his throat in an attempt to make a request.

"Gojyo?"

Gojyo jerked, and then shifted, straightening up, and his shakujo winked abruptly out of existence. He turned and faced Hakkai in the manner of a man facing a firing squad, but his expression was thunderous.

"Okay. So, let's go back to what. The. _Fuck_."

Hakkai pressed his lips together for a moment, and then realised he could still taste-

"A magic ritual of some kind," he supplied abruptly. "Either that mandala we were after was the lure or it was some kind of part of it. Your back is painted with the same design."

"My _what_?!" Gojyo grated, and executed a kind of odd twist of his body to try and see, which had the unintended effect of drawing Hakkai's attention to his incredibly lithe and quite attractive – and still quite naked – body.

"They took two of my limiters off," Hakkai added, hoping to distract either one of them, and Gojyo stopped trying to examine his own ass and brought his gaze back around.

"They-" he began in surprise. "Well, shit."

"Yes," Hakkai agreed, although he wasn't quite sure what they were talking about. "So if you wouldn't mind, I think that man with the blonde hair had them last?"

Gojyo looked at him a moment longer, and it took almost every ounce of blithe cheerfulness Hakkai had ever learned how to foster to not act as if his lying here naked with an erection was in any way anything to remark upon. He couldn't be sure whether Gojyo was buying it, but he turned away regardless and started searching what remained of their captors for Hakkai's cuffs.

"Ah," Hakkai said helpfully, "I think the bottom half is a little further to your right."

Gojyo threw him a look for that, to which he just intimated a smile.

"I don't see them," Gojyo said after a moment. "Maybe one of the crazies left with them? Look, let me just..." He got up again and turned and came towards Hakkai and if Hakkai could have, he would have leapt off the table and onto the other side. As it was he said, "No!" so sharply he might as well have drawn Gojyo a picture.

Gojyo stopped and stared at him a little dumbfounded.

"No, you _like_ being tied down naked on a table?" he extrapolated carefully, and his gaze flickered to Hakkai's cock so it obviously wasn't like he'd missed its state entirely. "Look, whatever gets your motor running is okay by me, Hakkai, but I kind of think we probably shouldn't be here when local law enforcement turn up, which knowing our luck will probably be soon."

He had a very good point, which Hakkai saw no way around, but still...

"Just find me a knife and I can free myself," he insisted, but with little hope. Gojyo was ever so stubborn sometimes, especially when it came to things that didn't really make sense to him.

"And I can have you out of this quicker than I can find a knife in that mess," he insisted right back, and by then he was tugging free the ropes tying Hakkai's ankles down, then his left wrist, then around to his right wrist and-

And the second Hakkai was free, he knew it had been a mistake.

It always surprised him, how fast he was able to move, how little effort it was when he did. It certainly surprised Gojyo, who had probably thought that lying flat on his back as opposed to standing generally required conscious choice, but the thing was that perhaps whatever Hakkai had been feeling prior to this moment had not been all magic, because he was still, to some extent, to some almost-overwhelming extent, still feeling it now.

"You need to get as far away from me as possible," he said through clenched teeth, like that could somehow convince his mouth to not... to not kiss... "Until I can find my limiters."

Gojyo's mouth hung open for a moment, and this close, Hakkai could see his pupils dilate, and dear God, that just made everything worse.

"Tell me to get off you, Gojyo. _Make_ me get off you." 

It was every bit the warning it sounded at this point. Gojyo shut his mouth, swallowed and then his expression hardened.

"Get the fuck off me, Hakkai," he said, lowly, and very much like he meant it. "Now. Or else."

Hakkai's hands trembled for a moment where they gripped Gojyo's arms, more a result of the battle he was having with himself than any threatening tone of Gojyo's.

"You don't want to do this," Gojyo added, a little more softly, like he somehow understood. "You know you don't."

But he did, he really did. Right now it was the only thing he wanted, but Gojyo didn't, couldn't, and it was enough, barely, to make his hands unclench, to make him move, back and away, on his hands and knees, as low as he could get to the ground, not the alpha, not the dominant male, that wasn't him, he wasn't like that.

"Hakkai?" came Gojyo's voice, very softly and Hakkai felt the base of the table against his back and stopped and stayed there and nodded.

"I'm fine. I'm fine," he promised, even if it wasn't totally true. "I apologise."

"Apologies later," Gojyo snapped. "Right now, clothes and not getting arrested, because that would just top off this peachy, peachy day perfectly."

"I don't think," Hakkai offered, trying very hard not to look at Gojyo while he started searching around. "I don't think they kept our clothes for us. I don't think they anticipated us needing them."

"Fine. Fine," Gojyo griped. "Sure. Psychopathic magic users. What would they need decent threads for? Well, these are mostly clean, and at least the colour sort of, yeah, blends. We keep to the shadows we should be able to get back to the inn."

"I really need my limiters," Hakkai said, mostly to himself.

"They're not _here_ ," he reminded, a little impatiently. "You're _fine_. There's hardly anything youkai about you with the last one still on."

"On the outside, maybe," Hakkai said, although clearly Gojyo was choosing to ignore that.

"We'll just get Sanzo to make you some new ones. You'll be fine until we get back."

Hakkai wasn't so sure. "Sanzo didn't make my limiters, but he's not going to be happy about me losing them."

"Will he be happy about this, then?"

And even though he'd been trying not to, Hakkai looked up, and there was Gojyo, still naked, with two slightly soiled robes draped over one arm and the mandala, wrapped in a scrap of another, in the other hand.

Hakkai stared at him a moment, and then sighed.

" _Please_ tell me you at least didn't touch it," he said.

+++++++

The trip back to the inn was furtive and silent - furtive, because the local law enforcement were indeed out and about, and silent out of what might have been necessity. Whether the police were looking for the remaining magii or they'd discovered the contents of the basement he and Gojyo had escaped from, Hakkai couldn't say and what's more didn't particularly care. That wasn't his most immediate concern. 

He couldn't stay, not like this. He needed those limiters. He had no idea whether his ability to control himself would only get worse in time, and he couldn't take the chance that it wouldn't. So he had two choices: either go back to the scene and look for them, or leave and make his way back to Sanzo as quickly as possible. Sanzo was the only one with even the remotest chance of helping or containing him. Either way, he couldn't stay here. He was a danger. Merely the way he followed Gojyo through the streets, close behind but far enough back to not draw too much attention, how focused he was on him to the exclusion of almost all else, was telling. The only reason he'd managed to keep an even distance thus far was Gojyo did not once seem as if he was on the edge of flight. If he'd broken into a run, Hakkai knew what would have happened, how he would have interpreted that, and it would not have been good. He couldn't stay, not while he felt like this.

But he was still trying to decide his best course of action when they reached the inn. Gojyo stopped, and looked back at him, and then slipped through the shadows and around the corner into the alley that the back side of the inn faced, pulling Hakkai along with him as if a lodestone to metal. He was half way up the side of the building, quietly pulling himself up from window to balcony, to drainpipe to window, when Hakkai decided that he would leave, but that he had just enough humanity left in him to explain to Gojyo why, and by the time Gojyo was through their window Hakkai was following.

"Ugh," Gojyo was saying as Hakkai slipped through the window after him and into their room. "Bath, bath, bath. That was not my idea of a fun evening, Hakkai." He tossed the wrapped artefact carelessly onto his bed and promptly stripped out of the robe he'd been wearing. The paint on his back was smeared and ruined and for a second, Hakkai's fingers itched to touch it, ruin it further. "We're burning these things given the first chance and if I ever, ever see you in velour again, we're going to have serious words."

"I'm leaving," Hakkai said seriously.

Gojyo paused in the process of dragging on a pair of jeans he'd been wearing the day before, and he wasn't looking at him.

"Right," he agreed with studied neutrality, as he dragged the jeans the rest of the way while Hakkai chose to look at the dresser instead. "Because you can't stand to be around me anymore."

Hakkai blinked and looked back again, his purpose momentarily derailed. 

"What? No. I-"

"You know, you didn't need to apologise," Gojyo continued as if Hakkai hadn't spoken, and his tone was strange, all wrong, as if he was making an effort to sound that casual. "I mean, you must have been pretty disgusted, having me all over you like that when you had no choice in the matter. I can understand why you'd want to make a break for it."

"What are you- Neither of us had any choice," he pointed out.

"Sure," Gojyo agreed, and the casual quality to his voice was gone, leaving something that sounded a lot like bitterness. "But only one of us _liked_ it."

"Which was why I was apologising... Wait." Hakkai interrupted himself. "You... You were _drugged_."

Gojyo glanced at him, frowning. "I think it was more like hypnosis. I knew- I _knew_ what was going on, I just couldn't see any reason to _stop_ it. It - you – I guess I'm kind of messed up, yeah, but I liked it, and if you hadn't bit me..."

He left the rest of the sentence unsaid, and Hakkai's gaze slipped to his throat. He'd bit him hard enough to make him bleed; no wonder it had woken him up.

"I liked the way you tasted," Hakkai confessed, forcing his attention back. "I may still do. I don't think I'm safe for you to be around right now."

Gojyo stared at him, and the expression on his face made Hakkai want to take a step closer, regardless of whether it was safe or not.

"That's ridiculous," he said, but he sounded a little shaky, like he didn't quite believe it. "You wouldn't hurt me."

It was Hakkai's turn to frown now. Clearly, neither of them were as sure about that as they needed to be.

"I can't take that chance," Hakkai insisted. "You're the only- You're my only friend. I can't take the chance."

"Do you think it's the spell? Or whatever it was."

Gojyo's voice sounded so small, and a part of Hakkai was somehow disappointed he wasn't fighting harder.

"I don't know," he said honestly.

"Are you going for good?"

Hakkai did move then, against his better judgement; not close enough to touch, but closer.

"No. Never. Gojyo."

"Okay," Gojyo sighed, and then took a breath and visibly forced a smile. "Okay, you do what you got to. It's cool. I'll meet you back home in a couple of weeks. Probably a better idea if we travel separately anyway, right?"

Everything, utterly everything in Hakkai was saying no, that was not a better idea. But he made himself nod anyway.

"It's probably for the best. Do be careful, all right? I don't want to have to come and rescue you again."

Gojyo jerked his head at that, and when he smiled again, at least this time it was a little more genuine.

"That was the _once_ , Hakkai," he reminded. "And this makes us even."

"Of course," Hakkai agreed, even though it wasn't technically true. "But be careful anyway. I may not be myself at the moment, but I'll still worry."

"Fine. I'll be as careful as careful can be," Gojyo conceded with a grin. "Wouldn't want to worry you, after all."

"All right," Hakkai said, and then made himself step past Gojyo – giving him a careful amount of space – to fetch his bag from the end of his bed. "I'll change on the road then."

"Take the mandala," Gojyo reminded, stepping carefully back to let Hakkai retrieve it. It brought them closer than they'd been since they'd escaped the magii, and Hakkai's hand only shook slightly as he picked up the parcel and stuffed it into his satchel. "You've probably got a better chance of getting it back than I do right now."

"Right," Hakkai said again. "I'm going." He shouldered his satchel and headed back over to the window and climbed through it and out onto the upper story eaves.

"Safe trip," Gojyo called softly after him, and Hakkai made himself not look back as he climbed back down to the street and started making his way out of town.

++++++++

Surprisingly, considering the trouble they'd gone through to get the artefact back, returning it to the monks was, as Gojyo still would have put it, a piece of cake. Hakkai would have liked to say that the look on Sanzo's face when he presented himself, down two limiters but up one stolen magical mandala, was worth it, but actually, it wasn't.

"What the hell happened-" Sanzo began, and then seemed to think better of it. "Never mind."

"Here you are," Hakkai said, and perhaps his normal mild mannered tone didn't quite translate in a half-transformed state, because Sanzo narrowed his eyes at him almost immediately and did not move to take the mandala Hakkai placed on the desk between them. "Although, I'd very much like an explanation. And you may perhaps want to send someone trustworthy to investigate a sizeable underground ring of magic users in the North Central Provinces."

Sanzo frowned. "There's no laws yet about youkai magic use-"

" _Human_ magic users. Who seem to have been quite well aware of what this is and does, whereas we," Hakkai remarked with a severe smile, "were not."

Sanzo stared at him a moment, perhaps judging exactly how serious he was and how badly he wanted to know.

"I'll see what I can find out," he conceded finally, and then waved in the general and vague direction of his ear. "And I suppose you want some replacements while I'm at it?"

Hakkai made his smile slightly more pleasant, although not by much.

"If you wouldn't mind," he agreed.

"And I suppose I shouldn't ask where the other idiot is," Sanzo grunted, and Hakkai felt his smile go less pleasant again.

"No," he agreed calmly. "You shouldn't."

++++++

The inhabitants of Chang-An gave him a wide berth while he waited for Sanzo. Goku came running ten minutes after he sat down and sat down with him and started chatting about his last two weeks of lessons, and how the townspeople had been saying there was a monster in the woods south of the city but how when he'd gone to meet it, it had turned out to be a cranky old boar with a bad tooth, and how taking the tooth out had been really tricky, and how come Hakkai looked so strange? And what had happened to his limiters? By the time he was getting around to asking about Gojyo, Hakkai felt his smile fraying at the edges, which was why the slamming open of the door into the Audience Chamber came as a great relief rather than a great surprise.

Sanzo stalked towards them, and the dark look on his face was enough to make even Goku shut up.

"Come with me," he snarled at Hakkai.

"I believe you might want to wait here," Hakkai advised Goku, who nodded, wide eyed, and wisely stayed where he was. Hakkai followed Sanzo back into his office and closed the door behind them.

"They damn well knew!" Sanzo railed, tossing the mandala onto his desk as if it were merely some worthless toy, and, well, who knew; perhaps it was.

"They knew it was a trap?" Hakkai guessed. "If They were trying to get rid of us, there are more direct ways to go about it."

Sanzo threw him a look as he stalked across to his window and back.

"Oh, They're not trying to get _rid_ of you," he snapped. "You're actually valuable to Them, the both of you. But that- that _thing_ ," he jerked his head in the direction of the artefact, "needs activating before it's any good to anyone, and the only thing that can trigger it..."

"Is blood magic," Hakkai finished.

"Not just blood magic," Sanzo said darkly. "And not just anyone's blood, but a hanyou's."

Hakkai stared at it for a moment, remembering. Of course, it wasn't like he could forget.

"But that doesn't make any sense. I'm not a half-blood and it was mine they used."

"I know," Sanzo sighed explosively, and flopped himself down in his chair. "But the ritual wasn't over when you left, was it."

Hakkai jerked his gaze to Sanzo's face, and Sanzo's careful, knowing expression told Hakkai everything he needed to know.

"Then I was supposed to..."

"I don't know," Sanzo said grudgingly. "It's adapted from an older spell – possibly Babylonian – and involves the blood from an unbroken hymen. I have no idea how 'virgin' translated to 'halfbreed' but apparently it did. It's likely the ritual wouldn't have required much. It's possible they had no idea you were a special case, and that any unfettered demon would do."

"But you don't know," Hakkai concluded, infinitely glad he'd insisted on leaving, now that he knew. "Is it still... affecting me?"

"Whatever charge the thing managed to hold during however much of the ritual was performed, it's lost now, as far as They can tell, so no, I doubt you're anymore in any way affected, limiters on _or_ off. They're not too happy about getting back a dead relic, but I had a few words to say about that that'll probably have Them searching for an anatomy text for a while, so."

"Ah," Hakkai intoned tactfully. "I do wish I'd been there to hear that."

"Also, here's another set of limiters." Sanzo reached into his sleeve and drew his hand out again and dropped the cuffs on the desk between them. "If you endeavour not to lose these ones, I'll endeavour not to let either of you idiots end up in anything like this ever again."

It was the apology it sounded like, and Hakkai accepted it for what it was. He stepped forward and scooped the limiters up, fixing two of them to his ear alongside the third and pocketing the last. Immediately he felt, not better but diminished, more less-himself; safe.

"I'm sure that can be arranged," he agreed. "Thank you."

Sanzo grimaced. "For God's sake, don’t thank me. Just go home and fix whatever it is that you broke. You're both completely insufferable when you're not getting along."

"Yes, I know," Hakkai relented, although really he wasn't putting up anything like a fight. "I assume you won't object to ratifying our services invoice? I was thinking at least twice the usual fee."

Sanzo gave him a nasty smile. "Make it three and I'll collect the damn money myself," he promised. "And send Goku in on your way past. He and I are taking a little trip to the North Central provinces."

Hakkai gave him a nasty smile of his own as he went and opened the door.

"In that case," he said, "I wish you a very successful journey."

+++++

He hadn't been thinking about it – or rather, he hadn't been letting himself think about it – but when he approached the house and it still appeared to be closed up, he realised that he had in fact been thinking about it all along. But he decided to make sure, before he started heading north again. Gojyo could have been distracted, or stopped somewhere to make a little extra money at a gaming table or two, just to keep his hand in, he liked to say. He could be in town drinking even as Hakkai was unlocking their door.

When he let himself into the house, the first thing he noticed was that it smelled like coffee, not freshly brewed but not mouldy either. He dropped his bag in the kitchen, did not in fact care one iota about it, and made his way through the living room to the bedrooms. But when he opened Gojyo's door...

He forced himself to take an even breath and go and open the other door, and as dark as it was, he was relieved to find the bed occupied. And perhaps he should have left, but he couldn't seem to make himself turn around. Instead he ventured further in, until he was standing by the bed, and then until he was sitting on the edge, and then until he was calmly and gently stroking the back of Gojyo's head. The relief he felt was immeasurable, like something had finally opened up in him and drained everything away.

"Mph," Gojyo made a small, muffled sound, and shifted, and then turned his head towards Hakkai and cracked an eyelid open. "Y're home."

Hakkai smiled and kept stroking, couldn't, in fact, make himself stop.

"Yes," he agreed.

"Feel better?" Gojyo mumbled, and perhaps unconsciously rubbing his head against Hakkai's hand.

"Very much so," Hakkai confirmed. "What are you doing sleeping in here?"

"Mmm, didn't think you were coming back. Smelled like you were still here."

Hakkai's hand was gentle, but whichever one seemed to be deep in his chest, squeezing his lungs, was less so.

"Of course I was coming back," he chided gently. "I promised, didn't I?"

"Not in so many words."

"I'm sorry," Hakkai murmured. "Will you forgive me?"

"For not promising to come back? Sure," Gojyo agreed, sounding a little more awake as he rolled over onto his back and Hakkai removed his hand rather than stroke his face like he wanted. "For wussing out on our big talk, maybe not."

"We were having a talk?" he asked, trying not to smile.

"Yeah, you know, the one where I said I liked being naked with you, and the one where you said you liked me being naked with you too."

"Did I say that?" Hakkai asked innocently. He hadn't, or at least not in those exact words. "Dear me. I must have been under some kind of spell."

"Hakkai," Gojyo said with fake patience. "Don't think I didn't notice you had a hard-on the _whole time_."

"Hmm," Hakkai said vaguely. "So did you."

"Damn straight," Gojyo agreed without any shame whatsoever. Either he'd come to terms with the change in their relationship on his journey home, or he'd never objected to it in the first place. "So would you please get down here so I can kiss you, or you can kiss me, or we can kiss each other, and let's worry about all that other shit later?"

"I suppose I can do that," Hakkai said agreeably, and slid himself into Gojyo's arms and found his mouth at the same time Gojyo was seeking his. They kissed, like that - slowly, extensively, wrapped around each other on Hakkai's bed, until Hakkai realised that he was touching every part of Gojyo he could reach and they were grinding with increasing urgency against each other and Gojyo was panting and smiling against his mouth like he wanted to laugh.

"It wasn't the spell," Hakkai said, and perhaps it was true. It was true enough, at least right now.

"I don't care what it was," Gojyo returned. "I care what it is right now."

"And what might that be?"

Gojyo grinned against his skin and no magic, black or otherwise, could hold any kind of candle to how that felt. Hakkai smiled his own smile back against Gojyo's skin, completing the loop, an unbroken circle, and slid his hand down between their sweat-damp bodies, pushed his hand underneath the waistband of the boxers he'd been sleeping in, wrapped his grip around Gojyo's cock and pulled just to feel the way he arched and shuddered against him.

"Never mind," he murmured. "I think we can conduct our own experiments."

Gojyo groaned, and laughed, and went back to kissing him.


End file.
